Crossing a state line into or out of Louisiana

Louisiana taxes its residents on income earned anywhere, and taxes non-residents on work done inside it. Which return you file depends on which direction you commute.

Louisiana borders 3 states. They fall into 2 different situations, and which one applies decides whether you file one return or two.

Where you file a nonresident return and claim a credit

Louisiana has no agreement with Arkansas and Mississippi. Work in one of these and you file a nonresident return there, report the same income again to Louisiana, and claim a credit for what you already paid. The credit is capped at your Louisiana liability, so you are not taxed twice, the combined bill lands at roughly the higher of the two rates. On $70,000, Mississippi costs the most at $2,800 and Arkansas the least at $2,653, $148 between them.

Work state	Its tax	Louisiana after credit	Total	Rate that governs
Arkansas	$2,653	$0	$2,653	Arkansas
Mississippi	$2,800	$0	$2,800	Mississippi

Where the work state takes nothing

Texas levies no personal income tax, so there is no return to file there and no credit to claim. But Louisiana still taxes the wages as a resident. The catch is withholding: an employer in Texas has no state income tax to withhold, so nothing is taken out for Louisiana either. The liability is real and nothing is being set aside against it, which usually means Louisiana estimated payments.

What Louisiana itself takes across a salary range

A single filer, taking the standard deduction. This is the figure every arrangement above is measured against, the tax Louisiana charges a resident, whether the work happened inside the state or over a line:

Wages	Louisiana tax	Effective rate
$45,000	$775	1.72%
$70,000	$1,475	2.11%
$120,000	$2,975	2.48%

Coming the other way: living in a no-income-tax state, working in Louisiana

Texas border Louisiana and levy no personal income tax of their own. A resident of Texas who works in Louisiana has the simplest arrangement on this page and the least room to improve it: Louisiana taxes the wages earned inside it, $1,475 on $70,000, there is no home-state return, and so there is nothing to claim a credit against. Living across a border that charges nothing does not reduce the Louisiana bill by a cent.

Reciprocity cannot help either, even where Louisiana has agreements: reciprocity shifts the income to the home state's return, and a state with no income tax has no return to shift it to.

What Louisiana charges as your home state

Louisiana taxes income on 3 graduated brackets for 2026, from 1% up to 3%. Because wages stacks on top of any other income, a second source can push part of it into the next bracket.

Louisiana is a community property state. In community property states, income earned during marriage is generally owned equally by both spouses. This affects QJV eligibility, MFS filing strategies, and retirement account contribution rules.

State income tax on wages only, 2026 rates. Not tax advice, what this does and doesn't cover.